Mountains to Climb in 2013

Even though I am a bit late with my goals for 2013 due to my schedule of the Quarry Unlimited set, I am still going to lay out my Mountains to Climb in 2013.  Last week I examined my Mountains to Climb for 2012 and was left wanting for the most part.  Hopefully this year will bring a little more success for me and my readers.  I have already gotten the year off to a bit of a change with the newly designed header for the blog.  What do you think of it?

As far as my goals, once again I have divided them into "Rockies Goals" and "Other Collection Goals."  I left out the third category of "Blog Goals" which I will explain below.  Take a read through my Mountains to Climb in 2013 and hopefully be entertained and maybe inspired to set some goals of your own.

ROCKIES GOALS

1. Get to a total of 10,000 unique Rockies cards.
This goal will be fairly difficult.  I started being a Rockies team collector around the same time I started this blog in January 2011.  I ended 2011 with approximately 3,000 cards and 2012 with a shade under 6,100 cards, so I need to get 3,900+ cards this year in trades, purchases, and pack pulls.  It will be difficult, but so was completing my yearly want lists and I am almost done with that. 

Perceived toughness 7/10  Perceived cost 7/10

2. Complete every Pacific base Rockies team set.
Last year I worked on Topps, this year I will work on my second favorite card maker, the under appreciated Pacific card company.  This goal will not only encompass the flagship Pacific set, but every Pacific made team set.  There were 40 different offerings from Pacific between 1993-2001 with names such as Aurora, Revolution, and Omega.  Of those 40, I currently have 4 complete base Rockies team sets complete.  36 to go.

Perceived toughness 5/10  Perceived cost 3/10

3.  Collect 100 unique cards of 20 different Rockies.
Last year my goal was 15 different Rockies with me starting at 3 and the #15 guy (Jeff Francis) sitting at 39.  I failed that goal.  This year I am going to set the goal at 20 different Rockies with me starting at 10 and the #20 guy (Aaron Cook) sitting at 58.  I feel I have a good shot at this one, especially if I complete goals #1 and #2.

Perceived toughness 5/10  Perceived cost 4/10

4.  Complete 50% of the 1993 Rockies team sets.
I'm not sure if any of you noticed, but on each of my Rockies want lists I have a tally at the top of the page that tells me the percentage of team sets from that year that I have complete.  I wanted one goal tied to that tally and while 50% of the 1993 team sets sounds like a lot.  However, the Rockies didn't begin play until 1993 most sets didn't include them.  There were only 76 sets (including insert sets, parallel sets, and oddball sets) that included Rockies in 1993 and I have completed 26 of them.  The goal here is to complete at least 12 more.

Perceived toughness 2/10  Perceived cost 2/10

5. Successfully complete a full rainbow with one of my 1/1's.
I have three 1/1 cards (1 Ubaldo Jimenez, 1 Brian Fuentes, 1 Christian Friedrich) for the Rockies which fall into a rainbow collection.  I want at least one of these rainbows completed by 2013, but it won't be easy because the easiest of the three still require tracking down a card #'d to 25.  I repeated the goal, so I figured I should repeat the write-up as well.

Perceived toughness - 8/10   Perceived cost - 6/10

6. Complete checklists of Rockies managers as players and get to a total of 250 unique cards.
One of my goals last year was to start player collections of each of the managers in the history of the Rockies.  I technically started those collections, but I wanted to up the ante this year and set a number on it.  With the addition of Walt Weiss, now there are six current and former managers of the Colorado Rockies and the collection will entail their playing careers.  With the Weiss collection, I am only going to count non-Rockies cards because his Rockies card are part of my bigger collection.  I will not be acquiring a second copy of each because I consider this a subsidiary collection rather than a separate one. 

Perceived toughness - 3/10   Perceived cost - 3/10

OTHER COLLECTION GOALS

7. Complete the Rookie Cup collection from 1980-2013 fully AND finish 7 rookie cups sets from 1970-1979. 
I wanted to continue with this goal as well, but with some additional years added.  There is only one difficult (read: expensive) card for me to get from 1980-2013, the 1982 Cal Ripken.  The seventies has 4 sets (1974, 1975, 1976, and 1977) that won't be expensive to complete and 2 sets (1970 and 1972) that have a couple of high numbers to track down, but they aren't great players.  Those six are the most likely to be completed.  That leaves 4 sets with big ticket players (1971 Munson, 1973 Fisk, 1978 Murray, 1979 Ozzie).  I will need to finish at least one of them (I think 73 will be the cheapest to get, but who knows? ).

Perceived toughness - 4/10   Perceived cost - 5/10

8. Get to 50% complete on the 1974 Topps Set.
This is the only vintage set that I am currently working on.  I started it last year and am currently at 18% complete (119/678 including 16 Washington variants and 2 corrected errors).  There are three major rookies in the 1974 set that I do not yet possess.  For this goal to be completed part of the 50% that I have must include either the Dave Winfield rookie or both the Dave Parker and Ken Griffey rookies in at least decent condition. 

Perceived toughness - 3/10   Perceived cost - 6/10

9. Finish 12 of the following 15 sets: 1984 Topps, 1986 Fleer, 1987 Donruss, 1988 Fleer, 1989 Donruss, 1991 Donruss, 1992 Donruss, 1992 Score, 1994 Topps, 2005 Topps Rookie Cup, 2006 Topps, 2008 Topps Heritage, 2008 Topps Update, 2009 Topps, 2009 Topps Update.
I added 5 sets to the list and upped the final total to 12.  The least number of cards needed is 1 (89 Donruss Gary Carter) and the majority of these sets need less than 20.  This goal will be quite the challenge, and I will be very pleasantly surprised if I get to 12 this year.  But I'm still going to try.  I should have an updated want list within a week or two.

Perceived toughness - 6/10   Perceived cost - 3/10

10. Start a "One of" collection for five teams and get to 50% complete on each of them.

This one I will go into more detail about in a couple of weeks, but I think it will be a very nice side collection for me.  The five teams will involve one team from each division (excluding the NL West).  I am still working on which of the five teams to include, but like I said I will be going into more detail after I finish with the Quarry Unlimited set in a couple of weeks.

Perceived toughness - 5/10   Perceived cost - 2/10

FINAL THOUGHTS

I'm not going to do any blog goals this year because I want to keep that loose.  I will say that I hope to have at least one post in September 2013, because I didn't post in either September 2011 or 2012 due to other circumstances.  I do have a few plans for this upcoming year though.


Will my goals be at successful as 2011 or as much of a disappointment as 2012?  It will probably fall somewhere in the middle, but I have high hopes because in January the new year can ALWAYS be the best year of your life.



Thanx for reading.